Thursday, November 15, 2012

Hello People!I am excited to announce the paper “Escherichia coli adapts to tetracycline resistance plasmid (pBR322) by mutating endogenous potassium transport: in silico hypothesis testing” to be published in FEMSMicrobiology Ecology.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1574-6941.12019/abstractThis is the third paper in my “in silico series”. The other two papers in the series are:Carrying photosynthesis genes increases ecological fitness of cyanophage in silicohttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1462-2920.2009.01866.x/fullandResonating circadian clocks enhance fitness in cyanobacteria in silicohttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380010001602Take a quick look at the model schematic in each paper (below). I think they nicely capture the spirit of the series. Specifically, all show cells with intracellular mechanisms (resolved down to the level of individual genes) [systems biology] and populations made up of individual cells [systems ecology]. This approach [systems bioecology] explicitly investigates the role of genes in the fitness of microbes.Prochlorococcus model: